A new
Letter from the Chairman on the Roberts Space Industries website announces
another milestone for Star Citizen, which has now passed $38 million in
crowd-sourced funding. The $38 million unlock is the Cano System, which is home
to a fully aquatic planet. Looking ahead, Chairman Roberts lays out the dual $39
million goals, and dangles this tidbit about an announcement that will come at
that time: "At $39 million, we’ll announce a new goal that will help chart the
course for the future of Star Citizen in a different way… and it’s one I’m
personally very excited about, so be sure to check back then and learn more!"
Thanks Aaron.

I was at work, so I did not grab the latest version, but it hasn't really changed. Yes, dogfighting is late and I wanted to honestly show that, so I mentioned they missed that original target and left the original target date to show that. They have not shifted any of their other targets, so I saw no reason not to publish the old version as is.

The early previews were made to help get corporate backing to supplement the full cost of making the game. They have now made enough money crowd funding to not need the corporate backing at all.

Chris Roberts has stated that a lot of the preview assets were being developed for the final Squadron 42 game. Specifically the carrier was being designed to eventually turn into the final product. Only the rooms that were finished were shown in the preview, there was still a lot of work to do. With the upgrades to the Star Citizen ships, the carrier likely has seen some tweaking. Also all footage was fully working in game. Some of the assets were purchased to fill in what they hadn't developed yet. I think the enemy was purchased assets just to have something. The preview was an early version of what will be the final game showing assets and tech that was already working.

As for development of Squadron 42, yes, putting the story in the game engine was just started in December. Writing of the story started before that, and so did the asset creation. The asset creation started about 2 years ago and was the first thing they started working on. Are they modifying the story, yes, I think 2 of the stretch goals extended the scope, but while getting the story in game is a lot of work, it is only part of a larger piece of work that they are well into. Why haven't we seen more? According to their weekly show, they want something to be a surprise, and that is Squadron 42. They have said a few times last year that they were in active development of assets for Squadron 42.

Yes, there will be a full release of Squadron 42. The early backers will get the story in beta episodes as each segment is mostly polished, but after the last episode they will do a final coat of polish which will be the full release. The final beta episode they are targeting for December 2014, final release January/February 2015. Chris admitted that December might be a little too ambitious for all the episodes to be done, but that is their current target. I think they were looking at September/Early October for the first episode.

This information is spread all over the place, but The Hull Truth and Wingman's Hanger are really good resources that pull a lot of this information together.